Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS: Collective Efficiency Building

解决当地环境威胁和改善社区质量往往需要众多不同居民的集体行动。造成邻里规模集体行动问题的环境和社会经济威胁的一个例子是入侵物种。打击私人土地上的入侵物种并实现相关的生态和社会经济效益，通常需要激励相当数量的居民参与对其财产的控制努力。大量文献表明，在这种集体行动的情况下，居民可能会受到他们对集体效力的看法的影响，或者他们相信足够多的其他人将做出贡献以实现集体目标的程度。尽管最近的文献表明，居民？入侵物种控制行动可能与集体效能的认知有关，但缺乏关于如何在居民中建立邻里集体效能以鼓励持续参与入侵物种控制的实地研究。相反，大多数旨在激励居民参与控制努力的外联和教育计划主要集中在为控制用品和关于入侵物种影响的信息提供财政补贴。本项目调查了一项外展干预措施--S的有效性，旨在增强居民对其财产和社区的集体效能和持续参与入侵物种控制的感知。如果这种基于社会心理学原则的干预是有效的，那么这项研究将提出一种新的方法，有可能用于在各种情况下建立集体效力，在这种情况下，提供公共利益需要众多和不同参与者的行动。例如，这种干预可以用来提高居民的集体效能，以改善社区的非正式社会控制，或加强居民对其他亲社会行为的参与，这些行为在社区规模上有影响，例如为当地公园或学校做志愿者。这个项目专门寻求增加居民参与控制夏威夷岛上私人土地上的入侵小火蚁。研究人员与大岛入侵物种委员会合作，进行实地实验，以检验集体效能建设干预在多大程度上增加了居民对监测和减少小火蚁在其财产和社区中传播的行为的参与度。一些被招募参加六个社区会议的居民将收到个人和集体的蚂蚁控制目标，鼓励他们就未来的蚂蚁控制行为做出公开承诺，并有机会讨论和分享他们的努力。其他居民将获得更多传统上使用的“知识转移”方法和防治蚂蚁用品的财政补贴。研究人员通过干预前和干预后对居民感知和自我报告行为的调查，以及对小火蚁种群的监测，评估了新方法和传统方法的有效性。这项研究通过整合一系列用于或假设在集体行动情况下建立集体效力和合作的技术，解决了文献中的空白。

Addressing local environmental threats and improving neighborhood quality often requires the collective actions of numerous and diverse residents. One example of an environmental and socio-economic threat that poses a neighborhood-scale collective action problem is invasive species. Combatting invasive species across private lands and achieving the associated ecological and socio-economic benefits typically requires motivating a critical number of residents to engage in control efforts on their property. A wide range of literature has suggested that, in such collective action scenarios, residents may be influenced by their perceptions of collective efficacy, or the extent to which they believe that enough others will contribute so that the collective goal will be achieved. Although recent literature has suggested that residents? invasive species control actions may be related to perceptions of collective efficacy, field research is lacking on how neighborhood collective efficacy can be built among residents to encourage sustained engagement in invasive species control. Rather, the majority of outreach and educational programs aimed at motivating resident engagement in control efforts have focused primarily on providing financial subsidies for control supplies and information about the impacts from invasive species. This project investigates an outreach intervention?s effectiveness at enhancing residents' perceptions of collective efficacy and sustained engagement in invasive species control on their property and in their neighborhood. If this intervention, which is based on social-psychological principles, is effective, then the study would suggest a novel approach that could potentially be used for building collective efficacy in a diversity of contexts in which the provisioning of a public good requires the actions of numerous and diverse participants. The intervention could, for example, be applied to enhance residents' collective efficacy to improve neighborhood informal social control or enhance resident engagement in other pro-social behaviors that have an impact at the neighborhood scale, such as volunteering for local parks or schools.This project specifically seeks to increase resident engagement in control of the invasive little fire ant (Wasmannia auropunctata) on private lands on the island of Hawai'i. The researchers, in collaboration with the Big Island Invasive Species Committee, conduct a field experiment to examine the extent to which a collective efficacy-building intervention increases residents' participation in behaviors to monitor and reduce the spread of little fire ants on their property and in their community. Some residents recruited to attend meetings in six communities will receive individual and collective ant control goals, be encouraged to make public commitments regarding future ant control behavior, and have opportunities to discuss and share their efforts. Other residents will receive more traditionally used "knowledge-transfer" approaches and financial subsidies for ant control supplies. The researchers assess the effectiveness of new and traditional approaches using pre- and post-intervention surveys of resident perceptions and self-reported behavior, and monitoring of little fire ant populations. The study addresses gaps in the literature by integrating an array of techniques used or hypothesized to build collective efficacy and cooperation in collective-action situations.